Nancy Dell’Olio, the former girlfriend of Sir Trevor Nunn, has conceded defeat
to Cressida Bonas in the battle for Prince Harry's affections.

It is a passion that has taken her to the polo, to the Caribbean and in hot pursuit down the Thames during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee pageant, but Nancy Dell’Olio has finally abandoned hope of a romance with Prince Harry after his relationship with Cressida Bonas.

“Cressida seems like a beautiful girl,” the former inamorata of Sir Trevor Nunn tells Mandrake at the launch of Nicky Haslam’s album Midnight Matinee, at the interior designer’s flat in South Kensington. “I don’t know if she is nice, because I have never met her, but I do think she is an attractive girl.”

Dell’Olio adds: “Prince Harry has obviously forgotten about me, a little quickly to be honest, and he has gone and found himself a blonde. She is a pretty girl, though. I wish them both the best.”

Family fortunes

As part of the BBC’s hugely expensive efforts not to appear too London-centric, Sunday Morning Live is filmed in Northern Ireland. Mandrake hears that the corporation is having to go to desperate lengths to persuade guests to appear on the BBC1 programme.

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It is offering a free weeekend in Belfast, not only for them, but also for their families.

A BBC spokesman confirms: “It’s common practice across the industry for guests’ travel expenses to be paid. Often, guests on Sunday Morning Live have to fly on the Saturday, to be available for the programme’s transmission at 10am on Sunday. Only in exceptional circumstances would we consider paying the travel costs of a guest’s family member, and no other additional expenses would be paid.”

Sounds like one for is the House of Commons public accounts committee, which is already on the warpath over the costs of the BBC’s £1 billion new headquarters in Salford.

Starsky and hash

Paul Michael Glaser, of Starsky And Hutch fame, is due in Britain later this month to begin rehearsals for Craig Revel Horwood’s touring production of Fiddler On The Roof. Let’s hope that the American, 70, doesn’t encounter any problems at Heathrow.

Last year, police were called to a hotel in Kentucky after receiving an anonymous complaint that he was smoking cannabis near the hotel lifts.

Glaser claimed it was medical marijuana, prescribed in California. “It was ridiculous, absurd,” he tells me. “I’ve never been a drinker. I’m from the Sixties; I’m a doper, a pothead.”